TISCH SAYS ‘BEST PRODUCT’ IS CBS GOAL

Laurence A. Tisch, president and chief executive officer of CBS Inc., said without qualification Thursday that “nobody got hurt” in the firing of 215 employees from the network’s news division last March.

The layoffs were part of a much-criticized network decision to cut 10% from the news department’s $300,000 operating budget.

Tisch, who appeared with CBS Broadcast Group President Gene F. Jankowski before national television writers and editors at the Redondo Beach Sheraton on the final day of CBS’ annual summer press tour, said the 215 workers went away happy and satisfied with what he termed “excellent pension plans” and generous severance payments.

“We took good care of everybody we laid off,” he said.

“Believe me, you would be shocked at the size of those severance payments,” Tisch said with a big smile when pressed following the conference about his startlingly sunny view of the situation. He repeated: “Nobody got hurt.”

Tisch pointed out that the employees who lost their jobs included many who were part-timers or close to retirement, and that many were kept on for weeks or months after the layoff announcement.

Jankowski added that Tisch, who became CBS president last January, was “unfairly nailed” by the press for the firings, since a long-term news department “downsizing” plan had been in effect since 1984.

This “everything’s fine” attitude pervaded Tisch’s and Jankowski’s replies to nearly every question raised at the session about the financial woes of the No. 2 network: Nobody got hurt, nobody’s hurting now and nobody’s going to get hurt. And that, Tisch said, includes CBS viewers.

“Let me make one thing very clear,” Tisch said. “We will spend any amount of money necessary to put the best product on the screen.” He said that included not only the news division but also the entertainment department as well.

Just as CBS News President Howard Stringer had done the previous day, Tisch maintained that the budget cut had not affected the quality of CBS’ news programming or the ratings, which in recent weeks have shown “CBS Evening News” with Dan Rather in third place.

“I’m as mixed up as everyone else at CBS is about the ratings,” Tisch said.

Tisch added that no one has told him the budget cuts were affecting news quality, and said that if they had, he would have made efforts to “rectify” the situation. “Nobody came in and said we’re shorthanded, or we need people back,” he said.

Tisch said he agreed with Stringer that recent Nielsen ratings have not measured the newscast’s true popularity, and that a new People Meter sample that rates Rather No. 1 is more accurate.

(Both Tisch and Jankowski disagreed, however, with another Stringer statement that the “CBS Evening News” would get a new look and “a fresh coat of paint” in the fall. “I don’t think there’s going to be anything revolutionary,” Jankowski said. Added Tisch: “I don’t think so at all.”)

Tisch refuted rumors that he and Rather are at odds; he said they maintain a good working relationship despite a newspaper article Rather wrote at the time of the layoffs about his fears that the cuts would affect news quality. “I consider my relationship with Dan as excellent,” he said. “We’re good friends, we see each other frequently. . . . I think he’s the best in the business.”

The biggest problem facing network television, Tisch said, is audience erosion, not budget cuts. “Everything else is just a sideshow,” he said. The problem is particularly acute during the summer rerun doldrums, he suggested, because viewers who switch off the networks for the summer might not return in the fall.

Tisch was not willing, however, to accept a charge made by NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff recently that CBS’ decision to air a collection of failed pilots as a summer series was a key factor in turning audiences away from network TV in general this summer. Tisch said the pilot broadcasts have been popular and pointed to the network’s decision to rebroadcast the miniseries “Space” as having hurt the summer ratings.

Neither Tisch nor Jankowski would say whether more layoffs are in CBS’ future, but they said the changing economics of network television would force CBS to consider carefully the value of filling positions vacated by attrition.

“We have had to look at the operating budget differently in the ‘70s and the ‘80s,” Jankowski said. “The industry cannot operate as it has in the past.”

Although Tisch said the next five years would be difficult ones for network television as a whole due to economic “disinflation,” he added that he expects CBS to narrow the gap between it and the top-rated network, NBC.